How to find sound effects for your content with Epidemic Sound
Whether you’re a solo creator, global business, or somewhere in between, Epidemic Sound has the best sound effects for your content and productions.
Where can I find royalty-free sound effects?
Epidemic Sound has more than 200,000 Hollywood-grade, royalty-free sound effects ready to use in your content. Subscribing gives you access to this massive catalog, plus more than 50,000 world-class tracks, next-level soundtracking tools, and more.
Epidemic Sound’s catalog of sound effects is brought to you by Soundly. Founded in 2015, the platform is used daily by professionals across Hollywood, Bollywood, and everywhere in between.
Soundly captures sound effects on location, records professional in-studio foley, and preserves old classics. Learn how Soundly helped recover and restore the iconic Wilhelm scream below.
Interested? Here’s how to find sound effects with Epidemic Sound.
- Use the search bar
- Browse by category
- Narrow down your search with sub-categories
- Find similar
- Use Epidemic Sound’s AI-assisted search
- Use Epidemic Sound’s AI-powered Studio
- Integrate your search directly into your editing software
- Use your chatbot of choice
- Get business-class, bespoke treatment with the Enterprise plan
Tip #1: Use the search bar
Use Epidemic Sound’s search bar to describe sound effects in your own words. The semantic search gives you more accurate, relevant results, based on feeling.
Tip #2: Browse by category
Have something in mind, but haven’t quite narrowed it down? No problem. Epidemic Sound’s catalog has tons of categories to browse, covering everything from birds and boats to swooshes, creatures, and vehicles.
Tip #3: Narrow down your search with sub-categories
Explore hundreds of sub-categories to focus your search. If you’re building an immersive horror game, there’s a gruesome amount of flesh, ooze, and blood sound effects in the gore category. On the other end of the scale, your ASMR-heavy cartoon could benefit from some clicks, bubbles, or pops.
Tip #4: Find similar
Found a sound effect that’s almost right? Scroll to the “find similar” section below your selected track to dig deeper.
Tip #5: Use Epidemic Sound’s AI-assisted search
Assistant is your AI-powered soundtracking sidekick. Built to search Epidemic Sound’s catalog, it’s a chatbot that helps you explore new creative directions. It understands the nuances of music and mood, speaks all of the languages supported by Google Gemini, and can handle requests both narrow and broad.
With a comprehensive knowledge of everything in the Epidemic Sound catalog, Assistant can help you find sound effects in seconds. It can also spotlight the latest and most popular tracks in the catalog, and can exclude sounds you don’t want to appear in the results.
Tip #6: Use Epidemic Sound’s AI-powered Studio
Studio is an AI-powered soundtracking tool exclusive to Epidemic Sound, which matches your video content with music, sound effects, and transitions.
Studio takes your video and creates a synced soundtrack draft, pairing music and sound effects with every frame. From there, you can solo, mute, delete, move, and trim individual audio clips, tailoring the draft to suit your project.
Tip #7: Integrate your search directly into your editing software
Don’t want to break your flow? The full Epidemic Sound catalog is available through plugins for Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition, plus DaVinci Resolve Studio. If you’re an Apple user, there’s also an Epidemic Sound desktop app for Final Cut Pro.
Streamline your workflow and never leave your project — find the perfect sound directly in your editing software.
Tip #8: Use your chatbot of choice
If you’re more comfortable using chatbots, search the Epidemic Sound catalog with LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Type your query as usual, find the page that suits you, and click the corresponding link.
Tip #9: Get business-class, bespoke treatment with the Enterprise plan
Enterprise clients have access to Epidemic Sound’s expert music curators, who work as an extension of your team to shape music selection and sound design to your projects. Build the perfect sonic brand with people who live sound.
Why use Epidemic Sound for sound effects?
Epidemic Sound’s partnership with Soundly gives you access to more than 200,000 premium sound effects with a legally watertight, affordable license. Epidemic Sound’s search functions are built to make finding the perfect sound easier, freeing you up to do what you do best.
Just think of how many ways there are to search for the same sound. Whoosh, woosh, swoosh, swosh, slow woosh, long woosh, wind woosh — you get the picture. All those terms and more will help you find the whoosh- and wind-style effects you’re looking for, because Epidemic Sound’s search is built to work for you.
Here’s what sports content specialist Bucketsquad said about working with Epidemic Sound:
“Epidemic Sound helped us turn chaos into a system by giving the entire team one platform for music and sound effects.”
And it’s not just Bucketsquad. Everyone from Levi’s to Warner Bros. Discovery, The Telegraph to Miami Dolphins, uses Epidemic Sound. Bespoke and future-proofed, it’s the perfect solution for your business or solo content.
Regardless of platform and media switch-ups in the future, your content is safe. What you publish during an active subscription is licensed forever, even if you choose to leave Epidemic Sound.
Start soundtracking the world, your way. Join Epidemic Sound.
Now that we’ve covered the essentials, let’s wrap up with a few frequently asked questions.
FAQs:
Can I find a free pack of sound effects and other assets for making videos?
You can start a 30-day free trial with Epidemic Sound, during which you can publish and monetize content featuring music and sound effects from the catalog. As long as you complete the safelisting process and publish content within the limits of your plan, it will be cleared forever.
Can you help me find more real sound effects?
Epidemic Sound’s catalog of more than 200,000 Hollywood-grade sound effects are made by professionals, for professionals. The Soundly team is often out of office and on location, capturing the sounds you need for your next project.
Can I find free AI to create sound effects?
Epidemic Sound doesn’t use AI to create music or sound effects. However, you can use AI-powered tools like Adapt, Assistant, and Studio to create different versions of tracks, find new tracks, and create soundtrack drafts for your content.
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